The interconnectivity of weather, animals and humans cannot be overlooked.
When the weather is too warm in northern climates, the simple yet indispensible honey bee is effected in dramatic ways. Without enough freezing, parisites and mites infest the hive, killing some bees outright and using the larvae as food. This can decimate not just the bee population but the fruits, vegitables and grains that depend on the bees for polination. The freeze also kills off some virii that have been shown to infest bees, wasps and hornets that leads to the abandonment of hives and nests.
Colony Colapse Disorder, as described by Bee Alert Technology , has become so widespread that viable bee hives are being rented and transported from state to state to keep the polinization happening.
Without Bees, almost 90% of the current crops would fail. Some crops can be grown with human-aided polinization, such as corn, but fruit trees, vining vegetables and other crops need the insects to grow.
I have seen fully made hornet's nests abandoned with larvae still in the papery comb, so it is not just the 'human friendly' honey bee that is being effected by CCD.
A degree difference in the last 20 years has shown subtle and not so subtle effects. Rain forest into desert, lowland swamps are drying up, but on the other hand, the upper grasslands are changing to forests that used to be further south. Alfalfa and corn being grown more north than 20 years ago, cotton being planted in Indiana. Bolworms are gaining territory, not just in Arizona and texas. Even though bolworms prefer cotton, they will eat other crops in the sprouting stage, migrating from cotton to tobacco to buckwheat before settling on more cotton.
The rabies situation in India is much worse, with human cases/deaths in the tens of thousands yearly. It is anticpated that rabies cases there will start to rise significantly----the reason being that the massive (90%) vulture die-off in the last three years will allow an increase in the population of wild dogs, jackals, etc. A similar situation is anticipated in Africa within the next few years.
The vulture die-off in India was traced to the use of diclofenic in cattle as an anti-arthritic/pain medication. It's marketed for human use in the US as Voltaren. Even small residues are toxic to vulture kidneys and can build up toxicity in other large birds. Diclofenic has been withdrawn from animal use in India, but it will take a loooooong time for the vulture populations to recover their numbers. Vulture die-off in Africa apparantly has a lot more to do with deliberate killing for use in folk medicine: vultures are believed to be able to give clear sight and clairvoyance. There's a posting from 2005 in the ProMed archives if anyone wants to search.
Bottom line: vultures are our friends. They do not spread rabies.
If they aren't fillling their ecological niche as scavengers, something else will, usually something canine and a rabies carrier. It may sound insignificant, but it is not.
And for those who have bothered to read this far, an anecdote about the late John Denver, from one of his former concert managers.
It seems that John Denver was staying with a buddy in Virginia somewhere, and on their way home came across a hit by car raccoon. They picked it up and took it to a local vet hospital, but it was DOA. In the process of explaining this to his young children, the friend told them that the "critter angels" had come and taken the raccoon. Apparantly the kids asked what the crittter angels were like. In one of those moments we've all had where the censor circuits get bypassed, John said "Oh, they're the black ones with the red heads!". For anyone who has lived in the east part of the country, 'nough said......